I am getting fairly comfortable with php, html etc. however i don't go into advanced stuff like functions, void's etc. Which i don't really have a clue on. I would like to get advice for a starting point such as visual basic or something like that, or a book i should et. As i will have to wait till alevel to get started, but i cannot be assed doing it then.

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As i will have to wait till alevel to get started, but i cannot be assed doing it then.
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What do you mean there. Are you involved in some sought of course. A sqize around any second hand/recycle shops may provide an oportunity to look over various flavour books. Without having to spend much in the process.

Having a dedicated testing directory can be usefull too. Somewhere where you can just run short tests on some lanuage item you might come across while reading a web page or manual page topic.

Just jump in and have a go ... always the best way, don't worry about it if it all csews up with heaps of error messages etc. With out the errors, nothing would be figured out anyway, so there a good thing in diguise really.

Hmm like jjmac said look back over the forums (mainly the programming one) and you should see there is a few threads todo with this sort of thing. If your wanting a "VB" type language then i can only recomend two thats REALbasic or Gambas

I was asking this around a irc.freenode.net channel, and someone hinted at me to try CLISP. I'd tried Java in the past, and found it bloated, and just not fun at all. I really enjoy CLISP, and would recommend it to anyone starting out. You can find an online printed version of a CLISP book at: http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ which is really concise and useful. I program with emacs and the slime plugin, which is a great combo- I find most IDEs to be really irratating. This is simply a suggestion, but using the gigamonkeys book breaks you in quite slowly.

I think if you work in IT or are spending alot of time with computers no matter what you do with them, get a safari.oreilly.com account. ANd get books on the work load you have or on the whims you have. Ebay for second hand books to get ideas on how the language works.

I strongly recommend Perl, Ruby, Python, C for starting. But programming isn't going to hold your interest until you do something with it, that list comes from what I had to do which was text processing and transformation - perl, an existing program I wanted to modify - ruby, a job requirement - python, I wanted more control than all these interpeters I was using - C. Perl got me more work done and I could do more with it especially after I learned threading and using the TK toolset, but then the TK toolset is their for other things, Ruby I am just really getting into and I am must admit I like it, it reminds of python without the spacing requirements and some hints of perl. I think Ruby might also be a good language to learn in, it really seems to be readable in english. A line of code reads back pretty much like what you get from it, though it is object heavy in todays programming world knowing objects is an ok thing.

Oh well that was a ramble I would go for an interpreter based language I am a big Perl fan, but Ruby looks good for the beginner so to speak. The great thing is you can just try them all, they are free as in speech and mostly free as in beer so if you really want to do it waste some time play with many ignore other people's biases and make some of your own.

It doesn't matter too much which language you start with. If you learn it properly, a good chunk of the knowledge is transferrable to other programming languages.
Each language has it's strengths and weaknesses which make it more suitable for some types of application and less suitable for others. Take a look around to see what is commonly used by others writing the sort of programs you want to write.
A good grounding in C will help you with most other modern programming languages.
Avoid Cobol unless you want to become a maintenance programmer for ancient payroll & stock control programs (which could be very lucrative, given the amount of these things still in use ) - it is very different from most other languages.
There was a series of 4 articles on Gambas in LXF recently which I thought was pretty good. Or go back a couple of years and dig out the Troutwars series that used C++ - that was great fun.

And I totally agree with Ninthwave - ignore other people's biases, try several languages & see which suits you best

i found java to be quite a fun language with its animation and sound capabilities, after learning java i had a go at c# which is quite easy to learn although i found it not as powerful as java,i also had a go at C++ which is very powerful but i find a bit long winded as you have to free the memory once you have used it,where in java you have automatic garbage collection etc
paul